Hours without a Socket

13 hours and 29 minutes. That’s all you really need to know 

If you are looking for a back-to-school laptop, there's a clear winner throughout the ENTIRE industry.  From The Wirecutter and other reviews, particularly Nilay Patel's on The Verge, it's a no brainer unless you're naturally stubborn. For all the Wintel lovers out there, this might not be easy to swallow, but we all know which laptop runs Windows better.  If you still can't tell which laptop it is, it's the Apple's new Macbook Air.  

September is Confirmed for the new iPhone

Once again, it's that time of year for Apple to unveil it's latest offerings in the crowded smartphone market.  On September 10th, we can expect Tim Cook and the gang to take the wraps off the rumored iPhone 5S and maybe introduce a lower costing iPhone 5C.  This would mark the first time in six years that Apple debuts a new lower tier model rather than moving the previous generation a step down.  

As the timeline goes, Tuesday the 10th falls in line with the usual Apple event followed by ten days of hype until the official release on September 20th.  We can expect reviews three days earlier.  

Get your wallets and plastics ready.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that along with the new iPhones, we can expect the overhaul operating system, iOS7, to make it's final release.  Are you going to be upgrading?  

Fine Coffee Cheaper than Beer or Soda

LATaco's interview with Tony Konecny from Tonx.org. I've now had one month worth of Tonx coffee and am a huge supporter and big fan! Try it for free if you don't believe me! http://instagram.com/p/XnBW0pFEgz/

I’d say the biggest misconception about coffee is that it’s expensive. It can feel expensive when you’re standing in a slow line in front of some prohibition-era cosplaying barista and shelling out 5 bucks for a cup – but even with that kind of a price premium, it is still almost a bargain.

For comparison, a pint of craft microbrew at a typical bar will set you back more than a great cappuccino or brewed coffee, even though the margins on that beer are much better and it requires less skill to pull a tap than to pull a decent espresso. But craft beer doesn’t suffer from quite the same perception of being an upscale, pricey luxury and it dodged a lot of unnecessary pretense as it became more mainstream.

When you make your own coffee at home, even the finest coffees become pretty cheap. We are buying and roasting some of the finest coffees available and our per-cup cost for our customers is barely 80 cents a pop. Much cheaper than most sodas, red bull, gas station coffee – and a hell of a lot cheaper than those popular k-cups and nespresso pods.

And we spend a lot of time fighting the misconception that you have to be a trained barista with expensive gear to make a good cup. Not remotely true. It is all about starting with really great, fresh roasted beans.

Coffee for Hipsters

Verve Coffee Roasters' Colby Barr on the current state of coffee's "pretentious" fans.

On one level the “it’s just coffee” mindset is the old school, World War II, canned coffee for 25 cents with free refills idea — that whole culture of American coffee that it’s an industrialized nation and coffee’s the fuel for it.

The other side of it is people that don’t resonate with words like hipster or foodie — it’s something they don’t relate to and if you don’t relate to it, you can be put off by it or be defensive.

via Inside Scoop SFGate

The Nexus 7.2

Since the debut of Google's Nexus 7-2 / 7.b / Nexus 7 (2013) or whatever, the reviews have all mentioned the stunning screen.  At $229, Google has placed it at $100 under the dated iPad mini and $30 over the Amazon Kindle Fire.  You could also opt for the Nook HD being liquidated for $129, but we all know where Barnes and Nobles technology is heading. Here's Marco Arment's take.

I’d be tempted to get the new Nexus 7 “to play around with”, but last year’s model sitting in my closet reminding me I’ll never use it is a very effective deterrent.

I'm enamored by the pixel density of the screen and a good friend tweeted to me that he's in love, but is it worth upgrading my Nexus 7 (2012)?  Being that it's been sitting idle in my bag for just under a year with an occasional here and there "wake" I'm much more along the lines of I don't care.  Every time I hold my 2012 Nexus 7, there's complete apathy but with my 2012 iPad mini, I'm overcome with warmth.

I also love his second footnote with an emphasis on the last sentence.

I offered to give my Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire to Betaworks in the Instapaper acquisition, but they had so many of both sitting around already that they declined. Tech companies with mobile apps can practically tile walls with outdated Android devices. They’re the new AOL CDs.

The Summer Ant Problem

On Monday, I made a trip to H-Mart in search for some Cronuts.  When I arrived, they had sold out and apparently are selling out within an hour of baking.  So instead, I bought a large assortment of pastries from Paris Baguette Cafe and looked forward to a delightful tasting with my wife when she got home from work.  After I put our daughter to bed, I came back downstairs to see that the ants already started the party.  To date, the ants have infested our family room dining table treats and are up 2-0.  I was livid and our for revenge!  The kicker is that I didn't even sample anything from the box as I anticipated a fun dinner. I looked up "ant killer" on Amazon and found Terro.  With just under 600 reviews and 4.5 stars on average, I was ready to buy but I needed something now.  We are subscribers to Amazon Prime, and love it, but it's was still two days away.  I went to the local grocery store and bought some Raid Ant traps.  The reviews on Amazon are sub par and in actuality pretty poor.  I was on a full on war so I ended up buying both.

The Raid solution cost me $8 while the Terro came in under $7.  I ordered the Terro on Amazon on Tuesday and it came next day!!!  Unbelievable service and I am truly impressed more and more by Amazon.  If I would have known, I might have forgone the extra money I spend on the useless Raid trap.

Within seconds, and I mean maybe 10 seconds, the ants were all over the Terro package.  The response was tremendous!  Continually throughout the day, it kept on attracting everybody while the Raid was the lonely child left in the cafeteria.  I'm giving it 5 stars!  Solid five stars!

An E-Reader That I Use

I get a lot of questions on what tablet I use / prefer (iPad Mini) and if I still carry an e-reader when I travel.  I do and I'll tell you why. To put it simply, my daughter has taken over my Mini.  Some other quick thoughts are that the Kindle Paperwhite is lighter than the Mini 95 grams, the front light is amazing, the resolution is crisp, and lets not forget about the amazing ecosystem than Amazon has established.

I've never enjoyed reading on the iPad unless it's a news article or a magazine through Flipboard.  I also end up getting distracted by all the applications that are on the iOS ecosystem.  When I want to read a book and dive into it, I'm still in enamored by my Kindle.  In fact, my wife prefers it too!

A Tumbler to Rule Them All

If you travel as much as I do, or find yourself commuting for long periods of time, hang on to your Contigo Travel Mug!  As long as you don't forget yours in the plane, you'll be happy with the Contigo 20oz Travel Mug a.k.a. Best Coffee Tumbler EVER.  It's a pure winner.  It's 100% leak proof and the kicker stats are that the vacuum insulated double wall stainless steel keeps beverages hot for 6 hours and cold for 18 hours! It kept my coffee scalding hot for so long that I had to keep the lid open for over 30 minutes just so I could sip the darn thing!  I highly recommend the 20oz version as it can hold a full can of soda with ice or a vent coffee.  If you're wondering how it tests for cold beverages, I've tested it through and through and was able to reuse the ice for multiple can refills of Mug Root Beer for a couple of hours as it seemed to never melt.

contigo20oz.jpg

Ideally, it's a tremendous coffee cup or coffee tumbler.  Just hit up your local drip and filler up!  In case you're wondering, I'm referring to Bird Rock Coffee Roasters!

Update: In 2013, I went through two Contigo Coffee Tumblers and one Zojirushi.  I left them all in airplanes and have only gotten one back to yet leave it in another aircraft.  I just bought another one today, February 1, 2014 and chose to go with Contigo as I wanted to actually be able to drink out of the tumbler within the first hour. The Zojirushi on the other hand, keeps your beverage scalding hot for over 2 hours so it's best for transporting and only enjoying a poured cup of coffee only in my opinion.

SD Memory Cards for my Olympus OM-D 5E

If there is one memory card to get, it's the SanDisk Extreme 16GB 45MB/s SDHC Class 10 card.  It's touted on many other blogs out there and I love my cards.  Personally, I opted for two 32GB cards but I'm leaning towards picking up another pair of 16s due to the speed and time it takes to dump them onto my networked drive.  Right now, both the 16GB and 32GB are around $1.00 a GB on Amazon.  Check them out and always remember to use my links!  Thanks!

I've been jealous of your looks since the 4th grade

Director of Monster University, Dan Scanlon, addresses the continuity problem in the origins of the friendship between Mike and Sully And comes up with a rather brilliant idea. I like it.

So yeah, now we joke that that’s just an old monster expression, you’ve been jealous of my good looks since the fourth grade. That’s what monsters always say to each other. So, uh, so luckily I feel like when you watch the movies together, the spirit of it still works great.

via Slashfilm

Free Apps on iTunes Store today!

A bunch of apps on the iTunes store have gone free! Both The Verge and 9to5mac have listed them all but here are my favorites.  

Day One - a beautiful journaling app for iOS also available for $9.99 on Mac.  

Over - add text with a beautiful selection of fonts and artwork to your pictures then and only then do they become Facebook worthy =) 

Barefoot World Atlas - a great map with animations and world facts just like what we could have used in 7th grade geography joust! 

and of course the $19.99 app Traktor DJ either the iPhone or iPad for free!  

Paying for Eggs

When it comes to buying your eggs at Vons or Ralphs or at any local grocer, which way do you lean? Are you paying the extra $1 a crate or $0.25 an egg for the free range or organic dozen?

Did you vote yes on Proposition 2 back in 2008 stating that farmers must increase cage sizes for chickens, veal calves and pigs by 2015.  If you did, you'd be helping a great deal by off setting this cost by spending the extra dollars.  In theory, everything proves to be a great idea, but with an economy such as ours, counting every nickel becomes priority.  

But when people vote one way, then vote a different way with their fork, they unintentionally undermine the very agricultural changes they’re rooting for.

Because of the dichotomy between what voters say they want, versus the reality of how they shop, the California egg industry faces ruin. The situation was recognized as being so serious, in fact, that state legislators passed another law, AB1437, requiring that all eggs sold in California must comply with bigger cage standards.

via Modern Farmer: Voting One Way, Eating Another

Bringing Norah to Disneyland

Bringing an infant to Disneyland proved to be quite a feat. Fortunately a Ms. Erin Foster from touringplans.com, put together a complete guide linked here.Basically, ANY ride that has a "Child must meet this height requirement" limitation is off limits. Other than that, it's a free for all. Smallworld all day long baby!